and it was forced to enter into relations of trade and amity with Europe
and America. This revolution did not come about peacefully. The thunder
of cannon was necessary to break down the Chinese wall of seclusion. But
the result seems likely to prove of the greatest advantage to the
so-called Celestial Kingdom. It has swung loose from its moorings in the
harbor of conservatism, and it is not safe to predict how far it will
drift, but it is safe to say that a few years of foreign war have done
as much for it as hundreds of years of peace and isolation.

From time to time in the past centuries Europeans made their way to
China. Some were priestly envoys, some missionaries, some, as in the
case of the Polos, traders. Afterwards came the Jesuit missionaries, who
gained an important standing in China under the early Manchu emperors,
and were greatly favored by the emperor Kanghi. After his death a change
took place, and they were gradually driven from the land.

The first foreign envoy reached China from Russia in 1567. Another came
in 1653, his purpose being to establish freedom of trade. A century
later a treaty was made establishing a system of overland trade between
Russia and China, and since then a Russian missionary station has
existed in Peking. In 1516 came the first vessel to China under a
European flag, a Portuguese trader. Others followed, and trade began
through Canton and other ports. But the foreign traders soon began to
act rather as pirates than as peaceful visitors, and in the end the
Chinese drove them all away. About the middle of the sixteenth century a
foreign settlement was begun at Macao, on an island near the southeast
boundary of the empire, and here the trade grew so brisk that for a time
Macao was the richest trading-mart in Eastern Asia. But so hostile were
the relations between the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch, and so
brigand-like their behavior, that the Chinese looked upon them all as
piratical barbarians, and intercourse did not grow.

The English had their own way of opening trade relations. A fleet under
Captain Weddell came to Canton in 1637, and, as the Chinese fired upon a
watering boat, attacked and captured the forts, burnt the council-house,
carried off the guns from the forts, and seized two merchant junks.
About fifty years afterwards they were accorded trading privileges at
Canton and Ning-po.

To England, indeed, is due the chief credit of opening up China to the
world, thoug